Instead, he was impressed all the more. Year by year the seaport drew more wealth to the ancient city. It grew grander with each passing season. And around it, in the century and more since they had razed parts of the city, the Romans had built a new and prosperous city from its ruins. The old city had been laid out in concentric rings that emanated from the heights of Byrsa Hill at its center: there stood the fortified walls of the royal citadel and the great temples dedicated to Ba’al Hammon and Tanit, the supreme couple in a pantheon of elder gods. The new city, in Roman fashion, was laid out on a grid, and the once sacred places atop the hill were shunned now, tainted by the memories of what had been done there.
Everyone knew that the Carthaginians had practiced child sacrifice. Ba’al Hammon had been an especially hungry god, and no one knew how many children had been fed screaming to his flames. The sacrifices had assured fertile lands and abundant crops, calm seas and full nets. They had assured good water and fine weather. They had assured success at war, the blessings of Ba’al, something greater than the innocent lives that fed him and kept him strong.
At least for a time.
Such was the way of faith, Juba had long since decided. No god was forever kind to his people, for no god was greater than chance and the inevitability of change in the world. All there was, in the end, were the men and the gods they made to favor or curse themselves, depending on the winds of fate.
That, and the belief that the people left behind.
And in that case, what place could be more sanctified, more full of belief, than the temple of Ba’al Hammon, where so many faithful had taken their children, their beloved offspring, and had given them over in sacrifice to the hungry gods?
“Is that it?” Isidora whispered.
The young girl and Thrasyllus had stopped walking where the buildings on either side of them, arched in a line across the slope, came to an end. As he and Selene caught up with them, Juba saw that ahead there was a darkness of ruinous stones and shattered pillars strewn among trees and brush: the despairing summit of Byrsa Hill, the center of the old city destroyed by Rome, the once-beating heart of a faith whose victims were still said to haunt it day and night.
For a moment Juba felt new fears infect his resolve. But when he looked at Selene he saw that there was hope written on her face, a hope of peace beyond the pain. A hope for vengeance for all that she had suffered. Seeing it, he remembered why he had come here. For her. He would do anything for her.
“It is,” he said. Then he strode forward. And as he pushed his way onto a path occluded by overgrown brambles, he felt the darkness open around him and welcome him inside.
* * *
The temple of Ba’al Hammon was, like so much of what they had passed on the summit of Byrsa Hill, a broken place. Its gates had long since been ripped away. The walls encompassing the open-air temple had been torn down. The pillars that once stood in rows leading to the altar had been toppled and smashed. Weeds made lines of green along the cracks in the dirt-strewn floor, and ropes of vines and brush made black webs between the pitted stone of statues beaten by chisel and storm into twisted lumps unrecognizable as men or gods.
There had once been a great bronze statue of Ba’al Hammon at the head of the sanctuary, seated on his throne, flanked by sphinxes, the curling ram’s horns atop his head just visible beneath his tall crown. The god’s arms had stretched out before him, palms up as if ready to receive a gift, and his bearded face had stared out over the assembled believers, impassive and unrelenting to the pleas of the mothers and the fathers—and the wailing infants who were placed upon those hands to sate his hunger and appease his need for tribute. The arms and hands were raised slightly upward, sloped so that as the child struggled it slid, inexorably, down the hot metal and into the yawning pit of fire at the god’s feet.
The statue had long since been torn down, melted in the forges of Romans who brought to Carthage a new set of gods to feed.
But the pit below was still there, black and dark. As he and the others had lit torches around the desolate place of worship, Juba had not dared to bring a light toward that gaping maw of death. He had no desire to see what might remain in its depths. No one else had looked either.
Juba stood now at the center of the circle of flickering light in the sanctuary. The four Shards in their possession had been carefully laid on the ground before his feet. Thrasyllus had read many books on their voyage from Caesarea, and he seemed to know much of the knowledge of the Shards that Didymus had entrusted to him, but in the end he could tell them very little about what to expect beyond the assumption that the objects should be more powerful in this place.
The young scholar stood with Selene and Isidora near the edge of the lit torches. By common assent, they had all agreed that Juba would be the one to test his Trident first. He had experienced more of the power of the Shards than anyone.
First, however, he reached down and picked up the Aegis of Zeus. He and Selene had both experienced the ways in which it had extended their endurance and strength, and Juba was certain that if the Trident was truly so much more powerful here, he would need the help of the Aegis to control and survive it.
It worried him to put it on, because he remembered so little of the last time he had worn it, in Alexandria when he had tried to seize the Ark from Selene’s brother, Caesarion. He’d been wounded badly in the struggle with those trying to keep it from him, and the Aegis, he was certain, had been what had saved his life—just as it had saved the life of Alexander the Great from his own hideous wounds. The Aegis had kept him strong.
But it had done more, too. The Aegis had kept him angry. It had kept him enraged. It had blinded him to suffering; it had fed an all-consuming intent to fulfill his desire to take control of the Ark, no matter who or what stood in his way.
And yet Selene had worn it without such effects. He had talked with her about it many times since they had made the decision to bring the Shards to Carthage, though he had never admitted to her that he was sure he had killed Caesarion in his Aegis-fueled rage. She said that she had felt no anger forcing itself upon her when she wore the armor. Instead, she felt a powerful capability of strength and insights about how to use the Palladium to achieve her needs.
The Aegis enhanced life, they decided, and at the same time it amplified the emotions of the wearer. Juba’s anger had turned to white-hot rage. Selene’s fear had turned to a piercing recognition about how to save his life. The Shard gave them each what they needed.
I need it to keep me strong, Juba thought as he pulled the armor over his head and onto his body. He began to pull its straps tight around his torso. For Selene, he needed it to help him find a way to kill.
He felt it at once. The Shard that settled against his chest was warm, and it calmed his nerves. He’d felt the same thing in Alexandria, but there was something more this time: a whisper at the edge of his mind, like a voice in the distant dark that only he could hear.
He turned to Selene to say something of it, and he was shocked at his sudden awareness of her heartbeat, her breathing. He was aware, too, of the looming shadows behind her, a wall of darkness like a wave that was poised to topple over them.
“Are you well, my love?” Fear and worry were written across Selene’s face, and Juba could feel the pulse of her anxiety.
Juba nodded and tried to smile. “I am. But there is more power here. I can feel it.”
He turned back to the Shards before him, and he took a long, deep breath, clearing his mind. Then he lifted the Trident and focused his thoughts. His hand reached out and wrapped around the Shard itself, just as he’d done in Cantabria.
The power surged, far beyond anything he’d felt before. It sparked through the tightening fingers of his grip. It danced along his skin, reaching up to consume him, to flow over him and pull him down into that black emptiness of the Shard. Clouds were forming overhead. He did not need to look to see. He could feel them there, gathering, pulsing like a heartbeat in the heavens. A wind was swirling into the sanctuary, and Juba felt even the ground beneath his feet tremble in witness of what he held in his grasp.